GCSEN Founder & President Professor Mike Caslin And Professor Mary Kate Naatus, KPMG Dean Of St. Peter's University Business School Deliver Lecture At Int'l Association Of Jesuit Business Schools (IAJBS) Conference, Seattle

The lecture focused on the critical role colleges can play in the sustainable economic development of local communities, as anchor institutions. Place-Making is an economic development strategy wherein a community's existing public amenities, such as colleges, are intentionally utilized to make genuine economic progress. Colleges as place-makers provide instruction in business and social entrepreneurship, overseeing social venture and business internship opportunities to students and adult learners, enabling them to engage in well-paying career paths in the local economy.

Mike Caslin, currently Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at SUNY New Paltz Business School in New York, has spent the last three decades studying, lecturing and facilitating efforts to promote and develop social entrepreneurship on a global scale. GCSEN's leadership and influence in the field of Social Entrepreneurship in Higher Education continues to build, as seen with its support of Wheaton College's successful effort this past winter to secure an historic impact grant of $10M from the visionary Diana Davis Spencer Foundation of Bethesda, MD. The gift established an endowed Professorship in Social Entrepreneurship, also providing for the renovation of a business department building on campus, and funding up to four new faculty positions in social entrepreneurship studies at Wheaton.

At the conference, Professor Caslin said, "We are very grateful and humbled that IAJBS, CJBE and IgnitEd welcomed GCSEN Foundation into this globally influential and inspiring network of leaders from 200 Jesuit Business Schools and Universities.  These service leaders, administrators and faculty, are truly world class.  We look to the future with great excitement and hope to provide GCSEN's "what, how, who and why" prac-ademic tools and framework as a unifying model and innovative process, to help students and alums to act more ethically, compassionately, effectively and efficiently in creating fulfilling lives and ventures. We want to empower more college, graduate and adult learners to quickly and practically take the right steps to make meaning, make money and move the world to a better place as 4P Social Entrepreneurs, by acting with purpose for People, Profit, Planet and Place."

The whitepaper is based on research completed by GCSEN regarding the current needs of college students attempting to find meaningful employment in an ever-changing global economy, and highlights GCSEN's experiences providing social entrepreneurship curricula and field experiences to students. The paper also touches on the benefits to colleges when they provide such innovative educational experiences. Input in the whitepaper also came from Saint Peter's University, which developed its IgnitEd Institute in partnership with Rising Tide Capital, a nonprofit organization. Since 2015, Rising Tide Capital, with IgniteEd's support, has trained over 1,500 participants in entrepreneurship, mostly in Hudson County NJ, Saint Peter's location.

Founded twenty-five years ago, IAJBS' mission is to enhance the ability of business school deans and administrators to lead in the creation and transmission of scholarship and knowledge, to prepare students for the profession and vocation of business leadership in a global economy. Jesuit Business Schools are dedicated to help students develop in ethics, service, social justice and responsibility, and where appropriate, in spirituality and Ignatian principles.

GCSEN was recently featured in a five-page article in Inner Compass, the IAJBS global publication. Entitled "Moving the World to a Better Place - Business, Social Entrepreneurship and Social Good." Inner Compass goes out to deans, administrators and faculty from 200 Jesuit Business Schools in North America, Latin America, Africa, India, China and the EU.

The opportunity for Professor Caslin to speak at the IAJBS conference represents the second consecutive year he has presented at the Global Forum, and highlights GCSEN's role as an ideas and action influencer in the global academic and business communities. The findings presented best practices for setting up college Place-Making opportunities, and denoted how creative Place-Making is funded, highlighting cities where such efforts are evolving. The paper presented is eligible for publication in both The Journal of Management for Global Sustainability and the Journal of Jesuit Business Education.

Whitepaper co-author Dean May Kate Naatus said, "I am so pleased to be able to represent St. Peter's University at this conference at to be able to collaborate with GCSEN Foundation and its 4P Social Entrepreneurship framework at arguably one of the most effective conferences taking place today anywhere in the world.  It is palpable, it is real, it is compassionate, and it is possible to move our world to a better place via universities as place-makers in the local economy."

IAJBS includes 45 countries, reaching hundreds of thousands of students. The list is impressive:
Argentina, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Columbia, Croatia, Dem. Rep of the Congo, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Guatemala, India (70 campuses), Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Madagascar, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, S. Korea, Spain, Taiwan, UK, USA (28 campuses), Uruguay, Venezuela, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Recently, GCSEN announced its latest higher education initiative, the Social Venture Internship program (SVI).  Combining an innovative on-line blended learning experience with an individualized applied internship, SVI offers undergrad and recent graduate enrollees the opportunity to create their own social venture business internship, gaining practical business experience and a GCSEN Social Venture Business Formulation Certificate. The GCSEN Foundation is an IRS-approved 501(c-3) higher education not-for-profit organization promoting and facilitating social entrepreneurship around the world.

GCSEN has been a leader in the effort to accelerate innovative Social Entrepreneur (SE) curricula in partner colleges, while offering similarly innovative programs to individuals. Caslin says, "It is vital that a new generation of business oriented, socially conscious millennials emerge, creating with purpose a "4-P Impact" with people, profit, planet and place, to make meaning, make money. And move the world to a better place."  

GCSEN Foundation's goal is to provide life-transforming learning experiences to 1 million millennials, while assisting in the formulation and launch of 10,000 new social ventures by 2027. The organization's Social Entrepreneur System Institute's on-line courses, campus-based Meaning Maker Boot Camps, faculty and administrator certifications, and at international academic forums help spread the word about the importance of accelerating the Social Entrepreneurship movement.

GCSEN has been featured in highly influential print and web-based forums, on social media, and on its GCSEN YouTube and Meaning Makers TV channels. GCSEN President Mike Caslin is the author or co-author of a number of highly regarded books, textbooks and whitepapers on social entrepreneurism, working closely with colleges, businesses and philanthropies promoting the movement. For its college campus partners, GCSEN offers its innovative, life-changing blended-learning SES Institute program, benefiting colleges with enhanced recruitment and retention rates, and increased student intellectual and practical engagement.

Mike Caslin is a graduate of Babson College's prestigious Fast-Track MBA Program at the Olin Graduate School, considered one of the top-ten in the world. The Founder and President of GCSEN Foundation, he is currently Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at SUNY New Paltz Business School. Co-founder and Global CEO of NFTE (Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship) from 1988-2008, Caslin is a past faculty member of Babson College, CUNY-Baruch, Marist College School of Business and Manhattanville College, Prof. Caslin has been a featured lecturer and speaker at the Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Dartmouth Tuck School of Business, and Columbia Univ. Business School Eugene Lang Center for Entrepreneurship, among others. Prof. Caslin has been called in as a Subject Matter Expert for the United Nations, the U.S. Congress and The White House.

For more information about GCSEN, or for an interview with Founder & President MikeCaslin, call 212-444-2071; e-mail [email protected]  or visit www.gcsen.com

GCSEN Foundation
The Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship Network Foundation
430 Old Neighborhood Road
Kingston, NY 12401
212-444-2071; www.gcsen.com